It feels like we should be at the half way point of the week. Every morning I have woken up with some kind of terrible back ache that mercifully dissipates as the day goes on. Probably The Lord is trying to tell me to get more exercise, possibly even drag the fat lazy dog up the hill. I always refuse to walk outside when the temperature falls below forty. I know our Lord suffered and died but that doesn't mean I have to endure cold weather….does it?….well, it probably does mean that since this is where he brought me….
Where was I? I am so easily distracted. Like….something that is easily distracted. Apparently, I can't think of words today.
Which is good because I don't have to preach or anything. I just have to get the children into egg dying, and make hedgehog buns, and iron some things, and run to the store for mint and flowers and cream and potatoes, and think of a dessert for the resurrection of our Lord, and go to two services. It may sound like a lot to you, but it's only half of the things I was looking at earlier in the week.
This week, remarkably, has been calm and easy (in comparison to other Holy Weeks, not ordinary time). One year, for instance, I was nursing a teething Gladys while trying to work up bulletins and write a couple of sermons. Other years it's been like the removing of one's own entrails to get a sermon out. Then sometimes we've all been sick. Of course, they all run together, all these holy weeks, in my dim and unremembering mind.
The very big and new thing this year is to discover that the four oldest are sentient and have hopes and expectations about the week themselves. The two little girls, of course, are wandering around in the fog of unknowing, wondering why we aren't doing anything we usually do. But Ephine declared she wanted to acolyte all week and then Alouicious joined her and then I found that both Wednesday and Thusday, Gladys and Romulus were there, in a pew, eyes peeled, wiggling and very excited. In fact, Romulus kept up a stream of pertinent questions whispered into my ear last night during the sermon, so that I was always saying, “that's a good question but too big to answer right now” and also, “shsh.” Of course one hopes that children will be formed by the liturgical rhythms of the church and be fed by them, but, who are we kidding, one, or rather, I haven't had a spare minute to do anything about it other to lug them there and try to sucker other nice people into holding them or sitting with them.
Anyway, Elphine was crucifer last night and was so cute I almost died.
And Alouicious
And a couple of feet being washed.
And finally, to congratulate you on having read this far, here is a little treat.
What is that, you ask. Why the strange grainy cell phone picture of something that I can't even tell what it is? Well, just remember that the children have been playing in the church for an entire winter, including yesterday, and they often include stuffed animals in their play. This is Little Stripes. A horrible little stuffed tiger who appears to be lovelingly embracing the cross on the font. There he sat for the whole service finally to be removed along with everything at the stripping of the altar.
May God have mercy on us all. Which I expect he will do because this is Good Friday.
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